Alabama

Embrace your own mistakes

I’ve encountered a lot of interesting things thus far in my training to be a Montessori teacher; but one of the more intriguing ideas is the notion of developing friendliness with error.

It’s a novel concept in general, and perhaps particularly so for anyone who’s devoted considerable time and energy seeking to avoid mistakes.

This friendliness, as I understand it, doesn’t mean trying to mess up.

No one wants to give someone bad directions, make an improper diagnosis or misspell a name in the newspaper.

Sometimes, though, these things happen.

We are human, and more often than we’d like, we’re going to say or do the wrong thing.

As a result we may feel terrible. We may also learn something.

Indeed, as much as we’d prefer to avoid mistakes, we’ve probably all discovered – consciously or not – a great deal from our errors. In fact, the greater our ability to recognize our own missteps, be they big or small, the better our chances of learning from them.

In "Spiritual Literacy: Reading the Sacred in Everyday Life," Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat share the thoughts of different thinkers on the matter:

"’The full and joyful acceptance of the worst in oneself,’ writer Henry Miller suggests, ‘may be the only sure way of transforming it.’

Give up trying to deny your evil or to escape from your imperfections and limitations. ...

"Accept and own your shadow. Name your demons and learn from them.

Realize you are not alone. And as St. Francis of Assisi advises, ‘Love the leper inside.’"

That’s easier said than done, of course. But if we’re unable to recognize where we’ve gone wrong and why, it’s liable to be pretty difficult to do much better in the days to come. If we acknowledge our flaws, foibles and failures and try to learn from them, however ,we may make great strides.

Maria Montessori wrote in "The Absorbent Mind": "If we are to tread the narrow path of truth and keep our hold upon reality, we have to agree that all of us can err; otherwise we should all be perfect. So it is well to cultivate a friendly feeling towards error, to treat it as a companion inseparable from our lives, as something having a purpose, which it truly has.

"Many errors correct themselves as we go through life. The tiny child starts toddling uncertainly on his feet, wobbles and falls, but ends by walking easily. He corrects his errors by growth and experience."

We can do the same.

To do so, though, we may have to stop looking at mistakes as our enemies and start thinking of them as friends with benefits.